Scottish Number Plates Deleted From APNR

Reg Plates Article

Scottish Number Plates Deleted From APNR

A Police Scotland move to delete more than 500 million records from its vehicle number plate recognition database has been welcomed by the Lib Dems.

The climbdown comes after a Lib Dem Freedom of Information request last year revealed that 852,507,524 number plate records captured by automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras across the country were held in a Police Scotland database, with data available from as far back as 2009.

Data retention laws require that any such information is only kept for crimes, while all other data must be deleted.

The Lib Dems had expressed concern that the retention of so much information relating to innocent individuals was infringing on people’s civil liberties.

The number of records deleted was revealed by the police in response to another Freedom of Information request submitted by the Lib Dems.

Information provided by the police showed 547,459,904 number plate records had been disposed of.

Police Scotland’s response revealed that in June last year a senior officer had instructed that number plate data should be “weeded out” two years after it was added, apart from those required for ongoing investigations.

It said this deletion was in line with Home Office and Information Commissioner’s Office guidance. It added that “manual weeding” of the data began in October last year.

Lib Dem justice spokesman Liam McArthur said: “Last year we revealed that Police Scotland had nearly a billion records of number plates, with the overwhelming majority belonging to entirely innocent motorists.

“It has been proven that ANPR cameras can be useful in locating stolen vehicles and identifying uninsured motorists, but we’ve not been given any evidence to show just how effective they are at doing that.

“I am glad to see that, after raising this issue, Police Scotland has finally taken action to delete over 500 million records and introduce a policy that will see old records deleted automatically.

“There are essential questions that remain unanswered, however; such as how Police Scotland was able to amass such an enormous surveillance network without a clear statutory basis or parliamentary debate. The SNP has a poor record when it comes to protecting people’s civil liberties, eroding and ending many rights and liberties.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “ANPR cameras are a useful tool to help detect, deter and  disrupt criminality. Their use is a matter for Police Scotland, operating in compliance with all relevant legislation.”

How close a series of letters or numbers are to a real name of word: if the match quality is high (and the numbers and letters are very convincing in making a popular word), the value of the registration plate will be higher. This means that a match like 5IMON, for the name Simon, will be worth a lot more than a more obscure set of letters and numbers that are not as convincing a match, such as S17 MMM for the name Sam.

The style of the plate: this means establishing if it is a new-style plate, an older-style format or if it is dateless or Irish, for instance. Other options are that it is a prefix-style plate or a suffix-style plate. New-style number plates, which have been produced since 2001, tend to be the least valuable because they are a bit less appealing to some collectors, plus the rule about not having plates that are newer than your car can also come into play, putting people off from buying a newer-style plate for their older car. Prefix-style number plates, which were in production between 1983 and 2001 can be more popular as more vehicles are entitled to have those licence numbers, and they may have fewer characters in total. Suffix-style plates, issued from 1963 to 1983 are relatively rare, which means they can attract higher prices than prefix-style plates and newer designs. Dateless number plates, also known as cherished number plates, were produced between 1903 and 1963 and are nearly always the most valuable number plate configurations; they have fewer digits and their dateless nature means that people can hide the age of their car. Irish number plates are similar to dateless number plates, especially because they don’t have a year identifier. They also tend to be cheaper than other types of vehicle registration plates.

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